Sprint Bets Big On the iPhone 366
hazytodd was one of several readers to tip news of Sprint Nextel's plan to grab a piece of the iPhone action in order to halt the company's downward slide. According to a Wall Street Journal report, Sprint has committed to buying 30.5 million iPhones over the next five years (summary of paywalled WSJ story), which at retail rates works out to roughly $20 billion. "To sell that many iPhones, Sprint would have to double its rolls of contract customers, convert all of them to the Apple device or a combination of the two." A separate rumor at Boy Genius Report suggests the iPhone 5 may be a Sprint exclusive until sometime next year, with Verizon and AT&T getting the upgraded iPhone 4S until then. Apple is holding an event to unveil the new phone tomorrow.
All in (Score:2)
Guess they're banking on the public loving apple, let's see how that bet holds out.
I think $20B is out to lunch though, I'd expect bulk rate if I ordered 30 MILLION widgets.
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Re:All in (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes you can, you charge the customer more than you pay and hide the extra in the monthly charges. Some phones are free to consumers.
Do you really think the phone companies were paid by the manufacturers to distribute those phones?
Now, does that mean they paid retail? Not necessarily or even probable, but your reasoning was just silly wrong.
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Uh, you're in violent agreement with The123king. There's nothing he said that conflicts with what you wrote.
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For the iPhone, retail price is likely essentially equal to the price Sprint pays. Phones are loss-leaders, not profit centers.
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Uhhhhh - twenty billion dollar loss leaders? Alright - if you say so. Let me look again, and count those zeros. Yep. Twenty Billion - not million. Oh-kayyy - loss leaders. If you know what you're talking about, they are taking one HELL of a gamble!
I suspect that those phones are going to be sold at some kind of markup. Maybe only a slight markup, but a markup all the same. No company can afford to take a loss on that much investment capital. Especially considering the number of returned phones, for
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He does know what he's talking about. The telco's make anywhere from 5-20% margins on any of those phones. The iPhone I think is around 10% gross margins, which means by the time you deal with your own distribution channels and activating it etc you're just covering costs.
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That's ridiculous. I love my iPhone, and my contract has been up for 4 months or so. When the iPhone 5 comes out on AT&T, I'm getting one. But switching carriers for it? Hah! General hassle aside, I'll be damned if I'm giving up my grandfathered unlimited data plan.
Would Sprint really think that it'd be worth a risky deal that, chances are, will never pay off? Making a 5-year commitment in order to get a 6-month head start, where everyone knows they can just wait? In a market where most people are on a
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your grandfathered unlimited plan is dead jim... the only people clinging to it are the fools.
they throttle you MAJOR HARD when you get past their 2GB plan's data point. I'm talking 56K dialup hard with latency so bad that even twitter is painful to use.
Stop spending an extra $5.00 a month for something fake.
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My contract is up with AT&T and my 3GS is showing it's age so there's a very high probability that I'm getting the next iPhone. I hate AT&T though, as it's pretty expensive. Right now I pay 160 bucks for two phones (one normal, one iphone). The wife pays 100 bucks on her Verizon phone. So that's $260 going out for cell phones which is crazy.
Like you I had the unlimited data plan but had to ditch it as I needed to add on tethering for my laptop (didn't jailbreak, went the official route). It see
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Holy crapola, that is crazy. My friends make fun of me because it costs me something like $0.20 to send a text and $0.10 to receive a text, and I don't have GPS or usable WWW access. But boy, I feel better about all of that when I pay $35-38/mo.
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Well, it is a HUGE gamble. According to the WSJ article, for Sprint to move 30.5 million iPhones in 4 years, they'd need to convert all of their on-contract customers to the iPhone -- and then double the number of customers on contract! A tall order for a provider who has been shedding customers.
They don't even expect the deal to be profitable until 2014 -- with a 1.5 billion hit to operating profit in the short-term.
Further, as the iPhone 5 looks to be a fairly mundane update, I doubt we'll see many peop
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Maybe I should have phrased it better. I know people want iphones, that's pretty obvious. I'm just doubting that 30 million of them want them badly enough to move to sprint.
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A VERY good question.
30M iPhones is 10% of the US population (or just under the population of Canada).
This is for a phone using a radio used ONLY by Sprint (WiMax - AT&T, Verizon use LTE, as does practically everyone else in the world). So it's a phone with 4G capabilities limited to the US market only.
I don't know what Sprint's mark
that's not bet big... (Score:2)
... that's all in. whoever made that bet should be standing up right now.
"over 5 years" (Score:2)
Who keeps the same phone for five years?
Redo the math considering that people repurchase iphones every 18-24 months...
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Who keeps the same phone for five years?
Redo the math considering that people repurchase iphones every 18-24 months...
I am pretty sure my family is atypical; but until we got new phones this year (when we switched to pre-paid), we were still using the phones we'd gotten in 2004.
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Who keeps the same phone for five years?
I do. I have an Audiovox 8610 dumbphone, and I save 90% on my cell phone bill compared to a smartphone.
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I save 90% on my cell phone bill compared to a smartphone.
You can see why operators want to dump customers like you for internet junky iPhone users then :-) ?
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I have a 8 year old Iridium phone that is still active and grandfathered into a pay per minute plan.
who keeps the same phone for 5+ years? people that buy real phones instead of the consumer toys.
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who keeps the same phone for 5+ years? people that never use their phone instead of those who want something useful.
FTFY
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I do. I went from a nokia 3310 to a moto razr to an iphone 3gs. Basically the 3 most popular phones ever.
What are they thinking? (Score:2)
I really gotta wonder what their executives are thinking. Why not do something to earn the market share like:
Honestly, expecting the sales of iPhone to be the salvation of the company is such naive wishful thinking it's scary. It's a sign of management that has no real ideas about how to be competitive, but only how to be a "me too" provider.
Re:What are they thinking? (Score:4, Interesting)
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I know one thing that they'll be thinking - no WP7 or Android phones for sale in their stores, or at least, tucked away in the far corner and the salesmen given instructions (and bonuses) to shift iPhone stocks.
You thought it was going to be hard for Windows Phone to get some market share before, it just got a lot harder.
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Re:What are they thinking? (Score:5, Interesting)
> Providing more price-competitive packages.
Compared to what? Sprint has plenty of warts, but price (at least, for individual customers with no family plan and exactly one phone who'd burn through AT&T and Verizon's caps within a matter of days and are perfectly cool with $69.95 + $10 for 450 minutes of peak airtime, and more or less unlimited everything else) isn't really something I'd classify as one of them.
> Providing better 4G caps than the competition.
Root your phone like everyone else, and the 4g hotspot caps are meaningless. Sprint chose that specific group very carefully -- the nontechnical users who actually go out and PAY for an official hotspot plan are almost exactly the same group who'll try to use their phone as their one and only means of internet access.
Sprint isn't stupid... they know the overwhelming majority of users who root, reflash, and tether for free already have the most expensive cable or DSL internet access they can buy, and use it instead of their Sprint data service when they're at home just because it's faster and works better. To repeat: Sprint really doesn't care about users who tether once in a blue moon so they can get online with their laptop at an airport somewhere while waiting for a plane. Sprint passionately cares about users who try to use tethering as a substitute for real internet service and 21st-century dialup.
Nobody who has high-end internet access at home is going to screw around with torrenting from a tethered phone, because it would be slow, suck, and annoyingly cause most of your incoming calls to end up going straight to voicemail. Likewise, statistically nobody with the means to tether is going to stream lots of HD video, because it's not free -- users who tether for free rip their content from Blu-Ray, convert it to .mkv, copy it to their 32-gig Class 10 microSD cards, and watch it from THERE. Sprint is one of the few carriers who understands that the users who can most easily subvert any controls they try to impose are likely to be the ones who fall towards the lower end of total monthly data use, simply because those users have better ways of getting online anyway.
> Upgrading network capacity.
No arguments there. Sprint definitely has plenty of room to improve in that regard.
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Agreed completely.
My iphone data usage is ~300 MB/mo. I use netflix app daily.
My wifes is closer to 3 GB/mo. she just browses the web.
the reason? I have wifi on at home and at work.
she doesn't know what wifi is. the phone either works or it doesn't for her. I tried explaining that LOLCATS will load faster if she goes on the wifi, but if it involves doing ANYTHING, pressing a single button, she won't do it.
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Doesn't it automatically switch over to wifi when available (i.e., not involving pressing a single button)?
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Doesn't it automatically switch over to wifi when available
Not if the user has turned off the Wi-Fi radio to save battery charge while away from Wi-Fi. Or should it know where to turn the Wi-Fi radio on and off based on GPS?
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Or should it know where to turn the Wi-Fi radio on and off based on GPS?
If you use Tasker on Android, you can program it to do exactly that. I do. I also programmed it to set my phone to silent when I get to work and turn the volume back up once I leave work.
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iPhones don't support connecting to remembered networks automatically?
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> Except perhaps people who live outside the coverage area of cable and DSL service, where nobody offers
>"high-end internet access at home", where the best options for home Internet are satellite and fixed 3G/4G
Please, enlighten me. Name one Google'able address anywhere in America where there's solid 300kbps+ EVDO coverage from Sprint, but cable internet or pair-bonded IDSL of comparable speed or better is unavailable at any cost. No, 153kbps 1xRTT doesn't count, nor does the ability to mount a direct
Clearwire (Score:2)
pair-bonded IDSL
IDSL is 0.14 Mbps, and if 1xRTT doesn't count, neither does IDSL.
[rural areas] where the best options for home Internet are satellite and fixed 3G/4G
No, 153kbps 1xRTT doesn't count, nor does the ability to mount a directional antenna on the roof and get fixed wireless service through Wimax.
Fixed WiMAX service is exactly what I was referring to by "fixed 4G". But I'll admit that my original comment displayed a bit of cluttered thought.
iPhones and Android phones aren't for frugal people who want to spend $12/month to make emergency calls. They're for people who live online 24/7
Some people need to run applications that are exclusive to smartphones and not available for PCs [slashdot.org]. This includes, for example, the check/cheque deposit application for an online-only bank or other bank with no ATMs near the customer. Or how would you recommend depositing a check/cheque to such a bank
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I really gotta wonder what their executives are thinking...
How many customers has Sprint lost because they cannot offer them the iPhone, how many sales to new customers do they continue to lose each day ? Apple sold 20.34 million iPhones in Q3 2011 [apple.com], let's say US sales amount to half that, those are all people who in all probability don't even consider going to Sprint because they chose their (i)phone first and carier second.
So... (Score:2)
Meanwhile some other company are ordering a lot of flat meat-like substances based on the belief that lots of people will buy hamburgers in the near future.
Big deal!
Preview of the IPhone 5, from NMA in Tapei. (Score:4, Funny)
They still have (Score:2)
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iPhone 5 may be a Sprint exclusive (Score:3)
The idea of iPhone 5 being a Sprint exclusive doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Obviously it would be great for Sprint, but I don't see what Apple would get from such an arrangement, other than a horde of pissed off existing customers who have a shiny new toy dangled in front of their face and then told that they can't have it right here and now.
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Exactly. Unless Apple is really worried about Android (or perhaps RIM, but certainly not Nokia^HMicrosoft). And they don't seem to be that worried.
But here we are again, playing "Wack an iPhone". Apple hasn't even formally announced the damn thing yet.
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but I don't see what Apple would get from such an arrangement
A load of cash from Sprint?
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That would be a very huge load of cash, to compensate for all the lost sales.
So huge, in fact, that I doubt Sprint would have that much to spend.
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That would be a very huge load of cash, to compensate for all the lost sales.
A big assumption on your part. Apple has had no trouble selling iPhones so far.
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That's my point exactly. Apple has had no trouble selling iPhones through AT&T and Verizon with no exclusivity deals. Why have one now, especially when it'll mean that existing customers (a considerable number of which would otherwise buy iPhone 5) would be locked out of it - because even among Apple fans, few would switch to Sprint just so they could get a new iPhone.
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Maybe Apple knows it won't be able to keep up with demand for some time and that being exclusive to whoever will still allow them to immediately sell every single device that comes off the end of the production line.
If that is the case, the exclusivity deal might actually be of value to Apple even without a truckload of cash as a payment. Having the newest model for sale everywhere, but unavailable anywhere is actually pretty bad from a PR point of view, The "fanboys" on the "other" carriers would possibly
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Why would Apple do this? (Score:3)
I call shenanigans.
Apple has had no problems selling all the iPhones they can make - so what would they gain by doing this? It seems like, if anything, they'd lose potential income, given that Sprint would almost certainly be paying less than retail.
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Sprint pays them extra for exclusivity while Apple ramps up production.
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I think Apple has a fair amount to gain here - if they are doing something creative.
Think of the introduction of the original iPhone. Apple negotiated an exclusive deal with AT&T in exchange for a share of the revenue AT&T received from the monthly contracts. Of course, AT&T hated that deal and got out of it as quickly as possible.
Sprint is just desperate enough to try something like that - expecially if they could pick up an exclusive version of the iPhone (perhaps a 4G version or a iPhone 5
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It only worked in 07 because smartphones were so very terrible, and the iPhone was the only decent one. The iPhone 5 is competing with itself and a truckload of Android phones, and someone who wants an ATT or Verizon smartphone already has options. Apple will just lose out on the upgraders, who will hold out rather than switch.
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Maybe Apple simultaneously developed three iPhone 5s: one with WiMAX, one with LTE, and one with HSPA+? Maybe the WiMAX model came out of production first (why, who knows/cares)? Maybe Apple is taking advantage of the situation this way?
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Well I have my doubts, but they may have a few reasons for doing this. First, it's possible that the specifics on this deal make it beneficial for Apple. Remember that it's not just about selling enough phones-- Apple's original deal with AT&T was supposedly the result, in part, of AT&T being willing to forgo AT&T branding, provide unlimited data plans, and to work with Apple on "visual voicemail". It may be that Apple has an unannounced feature that required carrier cooperation and Sprint wa
Meanwhile... (Score:2)
I don't believe it, but here's why it's a bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
- BGR says that the exclusivity will only last until Q1 2012... very short lived for a $20bil investment
- No iPhone 4 users (except people who purchased out of contract) will even be able to switch without paying a hefty penalty, making it nearly impossible for Sprint to win over a good chunk of the current iPhone users. Why is this important? Many of these people are early adopters. Luring them to Sprint for a 2 year commitment would be a huge win for Sprint. My guess is that the market for the iPhone 5 is much bigger for those that already have an iPhone 4 than those who don't. Even if the exclusivity was for an entire year, it would be just in time for upgrade window and contract ending for the current crop of iPhone 4 owners.
- Sprint is a discount provider, along with T-Mobile. They really do not compete at the same level, in terms of service and coverage, as AT&T and Verizon. People are less likely to switch from AT&T & VZW to Sprint
- For the above 2 reasons, hitting the kind of sales that Sprint needs to make that commitment to Apple seems unlikely
- The article pegs the Sprint version as a WiMAX phone. Sprint has already said that their strategic direction for 4G is LTE. Why would Apple or Sprint invest $20 billion in a technology (soon to be) in decline?
If Sprint is indeed doing this, they are betting the farm on the iPhone 5. If I was a shareholder, I'd be concerned.
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Sprint's is supposedly replacing their tower side gear to run EVERYTHING ...
http://newsroom.sprint.com/press_kits.cfm?presskit_id=19 [sprint.com]
That doesn't look like much of a Volume discount. (Score:2)
$655 each?? That is more than a 3G iPad at retail.
You would think with a volume of 30 Million+, you could get a a big volume discount.
I'm off contract soon... (Score:2)
Hey sprint, Give me 2 of the new iphones at $99.00 each and the same plan as AT&T but with less suckage in coverage and 3G as well as a $20.00 a month discount on the service for the 2 years and I'll switch right now.
I'll jump ship if you make it worth my time.
and THAT is what they will need to do. make it worth my time to risk a change for a 2 year lock in. I should pay less all the way around if you want my business.
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20,000M / 30.5M = 655.74 (Score:3)
Who can't do math? 20,000,000,000 / 30,000,000 = 666.67
FWIW its 30.5M not 30M.
;-)
So 20,000M / 30.5M = 655.74.
Apologies to the Iron Maiden fans who were liking the earlier calculation.
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Ahem [google.co.uk]:
(US$ 20 000 000 000) / 30 000 000 = 666.666667 U.S. dollars
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Check your math.
20,000,000,000 / 30,500,000 = $655 per device
The question is what this will do to Sprint's fees, and what they plan to do if they fail to double their user base AND get an iPhone into all of their hands.
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~$599 phone + ~$105/mo bill * 5 years = ~$7000...didn't you realize that your little pocket toy cost more than most used cars?
Sorry, but you are insane.
My iPhone 4 32GB cost $299 + $60/month on a 2-year contract with voice, data, and messaging. That totals $1739 for phone plus 2 years of cell service.
Since a basic home land-line costs $20/mo (without long-distance service), I figure that the cell service with long-distance voice, data, apps, and text/image/video messaging is worth at least $40/mo. So, the total cost of the phone is at most $299 + $20/month, or $779, over 2 years.
With the iPhone 3GS, it works out to $49 + $20/month
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~$599 phone + ~$105/mo bill * 5 years = ~$7000...didn't you realize that your little pocket toy cost more than most used cars?
Sorry, but you are insane.
My iPhone 4 32GB cost $299 + $60/month on a 2-year contract with voice, data, and messaging. That totals $1739 for phone plus 2 years of cell service.
Since a basic home land-line costs $20/mo (without long-distance service), I figure that the cell service with long-distance voice, data, apps, and text/image/video messaging is worth at least $40/mo. So, the total cost of the phone is at most $299 + $20/month, or $779, over 2 years.
With the iPhone 3GS, it works out to $49 + $20/month = $529.
I recently sold a 20-year-old Honda Civic with a blown head gasket for more than that.
Wake up.
Why are you using a 2-year cost when the person you are responding to used a 5-year cost?
I don't necessarily agree with his argument, but I definitely don't understand your logic!
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Why are you using a 2-year cost when the person you are responding to used a 5-year cost?
Because as far as I know, the maximum commitment for a subsidized cell phone in the US is 2 years. At least that's my experience with AT&T and Verizon.
I just tried to shop for phones & plans on Sprint's website for comparison, and it choked with the message: "We're sorry Login to Chat END TALISMA CHAT BUTTON". Ouch. Point gun at foot. Fire.
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Oh you mean "Americans other than myself". Those OTHERS. Those "everybody except superior, smug me".
Funny how all the expert economists hold jobs in IT that let them troll Slashdot, and all the "idiots" are the ones who are running the country. Funny how all those superior Europeans (you know, the ones who have spent the Eurozone into oblivion through entitlements and bread-and-circuses and the alleged "superior math education") are now facing waves of national debt defaults and bank failures. How could t
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Basic math, son, very basic. You can't spend more than you make.
Actually, you can.
The USA as a country, has consistently done this, running trade deficits with every major trade partner. This behavior has been supported by the status of the US Dollar as the dominant global reserve currency (since Bretton Woods) and petrocurrency (since the early 1970s).
Even today, after decades of financial shenanigans, the US can print its way out of debt by simply creating more dollars. This is called "quantitative easing", or "QE", so the average shmoe either thinks it is too complic
Re:Apple (Score:4, Funny)
...more and more people will turn to the one button wipe my bum for me interface ...
Its a vast improvement over the three sea shells.
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re: Its a vast improvement over the three sea shells.
How many people are going to get this reference? I'm sorry to admit that I just watched that movie recently.
Re:Apple (Score:4, Interesting)
I for one did immediately. It was a movie that deserved to be much more popular. I'm not sure who wrote it, but they did a really good job of putting that sort of detail in without providing even the slightest hint as to how one used the sea shells.
Or the somewhat more explained rise of Taco Bell to rule over the restaurant industry.
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Or the somewhat more explained rise of Taco Bell to rule over the restaurant industry.
Only in the US. Elsewhere, it was Pizza Hut [imdb.com].
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Can they actually just go "Okay, here's a check for n-million" and build a tower, or do they have to go through years of zoning, permits, and the like to get a tower constructed?
I honestly don't know, but I do know communities are so finnicky about having those towers near them that there's significant money in selling camoflauged towers.
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In many areas the towers are already there. AT&T and Verizon are already using them. I takes nothing other than leasing space on them for another cell provider to get his gear on those towers.
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Most places that require years and years of zoning law battles are already fairly saturated. That portion of our nation which has no coverage isn't going to put many obstacles in the way of new towers. I have fifteen acres, and secondary highway access to it, if anyone wants to put up a tower. No zoning to worry about, just send me a notice, and I'll get the building permit! The single minor hurdle will be getting the aviation people to sign off, but since I'm miles away from the two nearest airports, t
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In many places, it's not that easy. Money for towers is just a part of the problem. I imagine that people screaming, "Oh NOES! Radiaaashun!", are probably the major obstacles these days. For example, as much as people like to whine and moan about AT&T coverage in San Francisco, here is one small example of what AT&T has to deal with (yes, it's a bit old, but likely still 1000% valid): http://cdn.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/06/BAT01E8QTQ.DTL [sfgate.com]
Other examples:
http://www.engadget.com [engadget.com]
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I wonder how many towers $20 billion would buy, so that Sprint might actually be a choice around here, instead of the joke option you pick when you don't want to own a cell phone that can actually receive calls?
I think you are thinking about this wrong. Sprint is not losing 20B. theey are hoping for a 20B influx from either new subscribers or old ones churing to iphones. for new subscribers the payback time would be within a year since the marginal cost of new subscribers is small.
thus within 2 years that 20B should be all paid back.
the way apple books the payments usually they don't want it all upfront either. so chances are this isn't a 20B pre-pay but a 20B contract ammortized over 5 years.
thus the net ef
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Re:They'll have my name on a contract (Score:5, Insightful)
I imagine that for many, contract voice and data plans are very good. I, however, got sick of them after having a PocketPC for two years and then an iPhone for two years. I finally realized that 90% of my already small amount of data usage was just twiddling my thumbs, and that 90% of my actual phone usage was in a place where I was in front of a computer.
So I got a pay-as-you-go phone for under $100. It has a touchscreen, camera, mp3 player, etc. along with a Web browser that just uses pay-as-you-go minutes instead of counting bytes. It uses AT&T's network, so it has the same coverage as my iPhone did. When I'm gonna be on a long call, I just put the cellphone down, put on a headset, and talk through my computer on Google Voice for free.
Now I'm paying $70/month less and wondering why I ever allowed myself to get roped in to those contracts in the first place.
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I have Virgin Mobile. "Unlimited" data & texting and 300 minutes. $25/month (They just raised it to $35 unless you were grandfathered in). Optimus V that I paid $150 for.
I've rooted it and used it as my internet provider when on vacation with any problems. I use VOIP to get around the 300 minutes a month. For $25 it's absolutely worth it. And since it's prepaid it's $25 + sales tax on $25. Not "$25/month" + 911 fees + a ton of other fees so that it comes out closer to $40/month.
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...over where I wrote in big, bold letters NEVER A CONTRACT AGAIN!
I'm in total agreement. We were on a low-end family plan, making almost no calls and spending $80+/month for the privilege.
Now we're on pay as you go. We're still making almost no calls; but my daughter has the unlimited texting she wanted, I can use my new smartphone as much as I care to - and we're paying less than $50/month in total.
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What provider is this?
Do they let you bring your own phone or is it some outdated set of midrange smartphones?
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What provider is this?
Do they let you bring your own phone or is it some outdated set of midrange smartphones?
It's AT&T. I didn't have a smartphone beforehand, so I don't know what hoops you might have to jump through to "bring your own phone in" - but they offer a couple Froyo phones (that theoretically will be upgraded to Gingerbread at some point).
The first month I bought the bigger data plan; but I quickly realized I'm in range of wifi almost all the time. So I get by just fine on 10MB/month.
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At least, the HP ceo won't feel completely alone now.
it was unpredicted (Score:3)
In other completely unpredicted news...
a sprint exclusive would be a surprise to most people. It would fit with the conflicting stories we've heard. And it would make sense for apple too as a way to turn a negative-- limited supply-- in to a positive value--exclusivity premium paid by the carrier-- without raising the price.
this will make me sad. I can totally understand the logic if it's true. But I was so hoping that t-mobile or Verizon would get the iphone 5. We don't get sprint or aT&T where I live.
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But I was so hoping that t-mobile or Verizon would get the iphone 5. We don't get sprint or aT&T where I live.
There's a rumor that Cincinatti Bell has the new iPhone in their order system and they use the same frequency as T-Mobile.
If true, that could mean buying an unlocked iPhone directly from Apple would get T-Mobile's faster data speeds.
We'll find out soon.
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what if Sprint were positioning itself to be acquired by Apple?
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then they'd be wasting their money.
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If Sprint DOES end up with exclusivity, I can almost guarantee it won't extend beyond December 1. Honestly, I wouldn't expect it to last beyond November 15th. Sprint will probably get to have it to themselves for four weeks while Foxconn builds more for AT&T and Verizon, then Apple throws open the floodgates to make as much money as it can before Christmas. There's no way in HELL Apple would risk losing Christmas sales to people who'd prefer an iPhone, but will take a high-end Android phone if it means
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Ok... why is this on Slashdot? This is business news.
The technology offerings of a major US telecom, especially a huge shift is not of interest to geeks? If the headline was that Comcast bet big and invested in buying huge quantities of Juniper routing gear including cable modems would that be of interest? Love, hate, or indifference to Apple; a major switch by Sprint to offering Apple phones is news that many geeks care about. Deal with your insecurities.
I'm in a quandry now...but you're NOT on a "Droid" (Score:2)
Dude, you're not a *Droid* user unless you're on Verizon. You're an *Android* user.
Android isn't going anywhere. I'd be more worried about Sprint going away rather than Sprint (if it stays in business) dropping Android phones. If you haven't noticed, over the past couple of years, Sprint has successfully bet the company on Android. Pretty much the only reason they still are in business.
Re: (Score:3)
"I wish Sprint would have fewer customers and make less money -- passing up on high-margin customers, risking buyout, a selloff of assets, and long-term degredation of the network -- because it means my Sprint reception will be better over the next 6 months."
Adverse selection at work.